1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to high capacity storage devices more particularly the present invention relates to network attached high capacity optical storage devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
Optical media are used in a wide range of applications for storage of data. In the computer industry compact discs are used to store computer software. As optical storage densities increase compact disks are becoming more widely used in the entertainment, music and video industries. Compact disks are also used for archiving data and for storing reference documents.
An advantage of CD drives is that the compact disc (CD) has a high data storage capacity, e.g. 650 Meg and is portable. A CD may be individually removed from the drive replaced with another compact disc. Thus the user may have a collection of different discs which may be individually mounted on the CD drive as desired.
One disadvantage of CD-ROM drive technology is that the access times and transfer rates associated with CD-ROM drives are in general substantially slower than other comparable data storage technologies. An ordinary double speed CD drive commonly found in many of today's computers has an access time of 300 milliseconds. In contrast a comparable hard disk commonly found in many of today's computers has an access time of 10 milliseconds. Furthermore ordinary dynamic read-only memory (DRAM) found in many of today's computers has an access time of 60 ns. The amount of time required to read and write data to the CD drive is much greater than a corresponding time required to access other data storage technologies. With a large speed discrepancies between optical storage medium and other types of data storage there is a need to improve the performance, scalability, and availability of CD-ROM drives.